GINI DP 6: Income Inequality and Participation: A Comparison of 24 European Countries

Previous research suggests that where inequality is high, participation is low. Two arguments are generally put forward to explain this finding: First, inequality depresses participation because people have diverging statuses and therefore fewer opportunities to share common goals. Second, people may participate more in social and civic life when they have more resources to do so. However, up till now, these explanations have been lumped together in empirical analyses. Using EU-SILC data for 24 European countries, we analyse how inequality in different parts of the income distribution is related to civic, cultural and social participation. Results indicate that a substantial part of the impact of inequality manifests itself through resources at the individual and societal level. However, independent of resources, it is still the case that higher inequality magnifies the relationship between income and participation. This is in line with a view that inter-individual processes explain why inequality diminishes participation.

WP 62 - Vocational education and active citizenship: Behavior in cross-national perspective

Educational systems should provide students with job-relevant skills as well as prepare students for active citizenship. These two core functions of schools may be in conflict with each other, as diversified and vocationally specific educational systems usually do well in terms of labor market preparation (e.g. reduce youth unemployment) but may be detrimental to (commonality in) citizenship education. Yet, there has been no cross-national research that examines the relationship between educational track (vocational or general) and citizenship behavior. This paper investigates whether track placement affects political interest and participation in voluntary organizations for 17 countries, using IALS data and employing multilevel models. It was shown that people educated in vocational programmes were less active citizens than people educated in general education. Moreover, these differences were stronger in strongly stratified educational systems relative to comprehensive systems, indicating that vocationally oriented schooling systems prepare less well for active citizenship than for the labor market.

Selectivity of Migration and the Educational Disadvantages of Second-Generation Immigrants in Ten Host Societies

Selectivity of migration varies significantly between ethnic/origin country groups, and between the destination countries which these groups have migrated to. Yet, little comparative research has measured empirically how selective different migrant groups are in multiple destination countries, nor has research studied whether the selectivity of migration is related to the magnitude of ethnic inequalities among the children of migrants in Western societies. We present an empirical measure of educational selectivity of migrants from many different origin countries having migrated to ten different destination countries. We examine whether selective migration of a particular ethnic group in a particular destination country is related to the gap between their children’s and native children’s educational outcomes. We find that the disadvantage in educational outcomes between the second generation and their peers from majority populations is smaller for ethnic groups that are more positively selected in terms of educational attainment. We also find some evidence that the effect of selective migration is moderated by the integration policies or tracking arrangements in the educational system in the destination country

Curricular tracking and civic and political engagement: Comparing adolescents and young adults across education systems

Country-case studies examining the relation between curricular tracking (ability sorting) in secondary education and civic and political engagement (CPE) have led to mixed findings. This calls for a comparative approach. Thus far, as a result of the available data, comparative studies examining the effect of curricular tracking on civic engagement have been cross-sectional in nature. In this paper, we introduce a longitudinal approach by drawing from two cross-sectional surveys with identical CPE measures for the same birth cohort before and after tracking (CIVED 1999, ISSP 2004 and EVS 2008). We examine the relation between the duration of curricular tracking and the development of CPE between the age of 14 and young adulthood in 25 countries. The results show that a longer tracked curriculum is negatively related to the development of civic and political engagement, particularly at the lower part of the distribution. Moreover, we find that the negative relation between length of the tracked curriculum and CPE is mediated by enrolment rates for higher education. This result suggests that tracking does not directly negatively affect civic and political engagement, but does so because it is associated with reduced participation in higher education

Ethnicity, schooling, and merit in the Netherlands

We examine to what extent ethnicity affects academic ability measured in the first year of secondary school and secondary school type in the Netherlands. We focus on second-generation immigrants. The empirical results indicate that academic ability (both in mathematics and language) is not affected by ethnicity, independent of parents' occupation, education, and resources. On a bi-variate level, children of Turkish and Moroccan immigrants in the Netherlands are found relatively often in lower tracks in secondary school. This relationship is fully driven by social class and merit, operationalized as including ability and effort. Moreover, children of Turkish, Surinamese and Antillean migrants are, relative to Dutch children from similar backgrounds and merit, more often found in higher tracks in secondary school. However, given the very skewed distribution of educational attainment of immigrants, it is questionable whether `class versus ethnicity models' can accurately compare achievements of native and immigrant children in the Netherlands

Belief in School Meritocracy and the Legitimization of Social and Income Inequality

Educational institutions are imbued with an institutional meritocratic discourse: only merit counts for academic success. In this article, we study whether this institutional belief has an impact beyond its primary function of encouraging students to study. We propose that belief in school meritocracy has broader societal impact by legitimizing the social class hierarchy it produces and encouraging the maintenance of inequalities. The results of four studies (one correlational study, Ntotal = 198; one experiment, Ntotal = 198; and two international data surveys, Ntotal = 88,421 in 40+countries) indicate that belief in school meritocracy reduces the perceived unfairness of social class inequality in society, support for affirmative action policies at university and support for policies aimed at reducing income inequality. Together, these studies show that the belief that schools are meritocratic carries consequences beyond the school context as it is associated with attitudes that maintain social class and economic inequality

Skills and educational systems

Published online: 21 March 2023How well individuals are prepared for their labor market entry and later occupational careers is highly dependent on both individuals’ skill acquisition and the skill requirements of their jobs. Both skill supply and demand are shaped by national education systems: the former because education systems structure learning opportunities, and the latter because such systems structure the pool of the available labor force (e.g., Rauscher 2015). Conversely, economic factors and associated occupational structures influence national educational systems, as partly argued by the political economy literature (e.g., Busemeyer 2015). In this chapter, we focus on how education systems shape individuals’ skills acquisition; however, such education-system “effects” are of course embedded in national variations in occupational structures, which impact the configuration of educational systems. Our understanding of the acquisition of general skills (or competences) in primary and secondary education (until the end of compulsory education) and the inequalities therein have greatly been enhanced with the expansion of international large-scale student assessments since the mid-1990s and early 2000s, such as the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Trends vary significantly between countries and over time; for example, we observe declining means of literacy proficiency in a number of European countries and a rising performance in Asian countries

Privatization of preschool education : the implications for educational inequalities in cross-national perspective

Published online: 9 October 2023Preschool education is regarded by many researchers and policymakers as a potential equalizer of educational opportunities. Yet, cross-national research shows that there exist large variations in the equalizing effects of preschool education across countries. In this paper, we study to what extent the national level of privatization of the preschool sector can explain these cross-national differences by examining its impact on the equalizing effects of preschool education. For this purpose, we use data from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study 2016 for 24 countries. The results show that having spent more time in preschool is more strongly associated with primary school achievements for children of disadvantaged families. We find some modest support that this compensatory pattern—in which preschool compensates for a reduced set of resources in the home environment—is somewhat weaker in societies with higher levels of privatization, though not reaching conventional standards of statistical significance. The study highlights the relevance of considering the impact of national preschool settings on the distribution of preschool benefits across children with varying socioeconomic backgrounds

The digital divide in online education : inequality in digital readiness of students and schools

Published online: 21 July 2022The COVID-19 pandemic has disordered the educational process across the globe, as schools suddenly had to provide their teaching in an online environment. One question that raised immediate concern is the potential impact of this forced and rapid digitalization on inequalities in the learning process by social class, migration background and gender. Elaborating on the literature on the digital divide, we study inequalities in multi-level digital readiness of students and schools before the pandemic took place. Using data from the International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS) on seven countries, and the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) on 45 countries, both from 2018, we demonstrate that schools and students vary in their readiness for digital education. However, school variation in digital readiness is not systematically related to student composition by SES and migration background. We thus find little evidence for a hypothesized ‘multi-level’ digital divide, which would result from systematic gradients in the readiness of school environments for digital education by student composition. More important drivers for a digital divide during the COVID-19 pandemic are the ICT skills students have, which are strongly related to students’ socioeconomic background. For digital education to be effective for every student, it is important that schools focus on improving students’ digital skills